Torture

On September 5, 1935, New York University professor Dr. Louis W. Max informed a meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) that he has successfully treated a "partially fetishistic" homosexual neurosis with electric shock therapy delivered at "intensities considerably higher than those usually employed on human subjects," the first documented instance of aversion therapy used to "cure" homosexuality. (Note that the APA's 2007 Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation has concluded that "efforts to change sexual orienation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm.") As far as I can tell, the earliest experiments with aversive therapies at BYU to "cure" homosexuality date to the mid‑1960s and were spearheaded by D. Eugene Thorne, head of BYU's Psychology Dept. By 1968, he had gained enough information to report his findings from BYU in a paper given in San Francisco that year for the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Then in 1969, school administration became more careful in its use of controversial therapies for treating "sexual deviancy" as they put it. The administration publicly claimed that use of such therapies had been curtailed but unofficially they continued unabated. BYU's Academic Vice President, Robert Thomas, advised college deans to alert those who were using aversive therapies to be "particularly cautious in utilizing them" ... out of fear for law suits.

Under the oversight of his committee chairman, Dr. Thorne, McBride experimented on fourteen Gay male subjects to determine if using photographs of nude men and women from Playgirl‑ and Playboy‑type magazines was helpful in electric shock therapy. The 14 Gay BYU students in McBride's study were compared after being "treated" on an out‑patient basis during 22 sessions of shock therapy. Each of the 22 sessions lasted 50 minutes. 10 of those minutes were spent in "assertive training" and the remaining 40 minutes in "aversive conditioning." The average duration of treatment for the men was three months. The release form these men were required to sign informed them that "damage to tissue or organs may occur," that they would be looking at "sensitive materials" possibly contrary to their values [ie. pornography], and that BYU would be released from any responsibility for any damage done to them.

Max Ford McBride's PhD dissertation, completed in August 1976 under the direction of BYU psychology professor D. Eugene Thorne (note that Dr. I. Reed Payne, of the "Payne Papers" infamy, was also on his dissertation committee), is an excellent example of clinical dehumanization practiced by Mormon "therapists". In the Mormon worldview, the end certainly justifies the means: heterosexuality must be attained and maintained AT ANY COST ‑ even if it means using pornography (which the Mormon Church is usually vehemently opposed to) and physical torture.

The longterm effects of the electric shock "therapy" these men were subjected to has been crippling. Two of the men committed suicide soon after completing this torturous study. Every survivor I have interviewed has suffered life‑long emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical damage. In 1999, John Cameron, one of the 14 men who went through this horrific experience in 1976 when he was a 23 year old BYU student and member of the Young Ambassadors, wrote to me, "For 22 years now I have lived with the scars of the experience ‑ unable to articulate a personal suffering and longing that have almost crippled me....I didn't completely come out of the closet until I was 34, and only after much angry, pissed‑off therapy. I spent a lot of money just so I could yell at my psychologist and break things in his office for an hour every week for two years. But it was a hell of a lot more fun than Ford McBride and the electrodes."

In 1975, the BYU Psychology Department administrators organized a Board of Review for Psychotherapeutic Techniques to recommend "policies governing the use of sensitive treatment techniques" on campus. Within a year, the review board had assembled a list of eight therapies being used at BYU which "could conflict" with church teachings. However, most of the therapies were not stopped (including electric shock, vommiting aversion, and the use of pornographic materials).

[BYU is] a place where no one is allowed to drink or smoke; where sex is outlawed for everyone but married couples; where public figures like Senator Edward Kennedy and former first lady Betty Ford have been prevented from speaking on campus and films like The Godfather deemed unfit for student viewing; where a boy was brought to trial for looking up a girl's skirt in the library stacks (the girl never noticed, but a security man did); and where gays are not only systematically expelled but, until recent years, were even subjected occasionally to electroshock therapy to treat their 'affliction.'

The son of Gilbert Fay and Lucy Pettingill Lauritzen, Brad G. Lauritzen born in Brigham City, Utah on October 26, 1947. In 1966, Brad registered in Brigham Young University's Study Abroad Program and spent a semester in Grenoble, France. While a student at BYU, Brad became affiliated with a social group for gay people in 1967 and early 1968 that met regularly in the "step down lounge" at the Wilkinson Center. Brad was outed by Donald Attridge, another gay student, in the early spring of 1968. Attridge had turned in a lengthy list of names to Apostle Spencer Kimball after receiving assurances from both BYU's head of Standards Office, Kenneth Lauritzen (no relation to Brad), and Kimball that those on the list would be "helped" by Kimball. Instead, Brad was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of a mental institution by his family. He later escaped and ran away to San Francisco, where he committed suicide just before Christmas, on December 18, 1971. He was 24 years old.